-
Learning from Thoreau
Originally posted on Backyard and Beyond: Henry David Thoreau didn’t particularly like cities, including New York, all that much. “The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population,”he wrote while visiting in 1843. Thoreau was a country mouse at heart, not a city rat. He was neither the first nor the last…
-
The Red-Orange and the Black-Purple
Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula)
-
Ending The Endless War
Last year was the the hottest year since modern record keeping began in 1880, capping all the other recent record-breakers. And it’s NOT going to get better. If you were born in 1985 or after, you’ve never experienced a year in which the global temperature has been below the 20th-century average. And then there’s methane.…
-
Ruddy, Ruddy
Many ducks sport their breeding plumage over the winter, but the Ruddy Ducks don’t start turning until… about now. This male should have an astonishingly light, electric blue bill and much warmer cinnamon-brown plumage in a month or so.A female. She won’t get all peacocky. Ruddy ducks often have their stiff tails raised as here…
-
Raptor Wednesday
What you don’t see here are the Blue Jays (Cyanocitta cristata) that were buzzing this Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). I may have inadvertently flushed the hawk from some prey on the ground on the hill below me, since when it first landed it looked like it was stretching a piece of flesh between talon and…
-
Common Reed
It’s certainly photogenic, if nothing else. You don’t find much life in a patch of Phragmites, although Downy Woodpeckers and, as here, a Black-capped Chickadee in winter extremis, peck and poke among the dry stalks for evidence of invertebrates.
-
The Diving Goose
Most of Prospect Lake is frozen and snow covered, so an open patch on the southwestern end is absolutely swarming with Ring-billed gulls and assorted waterfowl, bathing, dabbling, diving close to the shore. There was even a turtle the other day, perhaps popping up to look for spring before retreating back down into the muck.Amongst…
-
Come Walk With Me
I started this blog in 2010: here’s my very first post from March 3rd. Five years! In the internet’s split-second, ahistorical frenzy, that must be like half-a-hundred in dog-years. To celebrate, I will be taking a walk in Prospect Park and Green-Wood on Sunday, March 1st. You, my faithful readers, are invited to come along…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Backyard and Beyond 